Three Two Eight: Embarrassment

This afternoon I drove past a restaurant where I used to spend almost every Friday and Saturday night at the bar. I spent six years doing that. I always refer to the place as "the steakhouse bar" and yes, they did the best Porterhouse and the best martini in the city. I miss being there.

I haven't been there since September 2017-- almost four years now. As much as I love the food, I haven't used a delivery service to order anything, and I haven't sent anyone from the office staff to pick up any of their signature tamales. There's no way I'll ever go back there. 

The reasons are simple enough. In September 2017 I hooked up with one of the bartendrix girls there. We were outside in the parking lot making out in her car and someone complained to management that we were doing that. I stress that she was not on the clock and that we weren't doing anything too terribly (or at least visibly)  advanced. However...the unknown person did complain and, yes, the girl was in fact married.  So I can't ever go back there. I don't know that I was officially banned, temporarily or permanently, but when I heard that there had been  a complaint made and that the manager (whom I knew) wanted to speak to me, I just never went back. I have no plans ever to go back. I was far too embarrassed for that.

The same is true about the hipster cafe downtown where I met the girl who came back to my flat to swim this June. The two of us had a fun time that afternoon at the bar, ordering cocktails and flirting shamelessly. Some dancing together at our bar stools may have been involved. But we did tell stories to one another about our lives, and I don't know who may have heard those things. I'm foggy on what exactly I told her. I'm foggy on what people who work at the cafe may now know or think they know about me.

So of course I can't go back. I have no idea whether I'm welcome there or whether the bar staff are laughing at me. I have no idea whether anything I may have told the girl will come back to haunt me or was overheard by random other customers. So that's one more place I can't go.

Embarrassment is like some razor-edged coral reef shaping all the travels of my life. I won't go back to any place that I associate with embarrassment or humiliation. 

Now-- embarrassment is always there for me-- embarrassment and fear of embarrassment in public. I wrote someone this morning to say that one way in which courtship rituals in 2021 have become far scarier and more exhausting than they were in, say, 2011,  is the enhanced potential for both embarrassment and public shaming. Ten years ago, I'd have had no problem saying to a Young Companion that, "These are the [insert list of things] I like. Do you like any of them? Would you be interested in any of them?" 

At any point since my undergraduate days, I'd have just said that-- please see list, shall we negotiate? I could never do that now. I'd be far too afraid of being mocked and treated with derision-- or worse, treated as some sort of aggressor. I don't think I could ask for a Young Companion's own list at all. I mean, I'd probably be open to most things, even to wearing plastic reindeer antlers in bed. But I'd never ask. Asking-- offering to negotiate her list --would almost certainly be taken as something Bad on my part. 

I can no longer risk being seen or heard to flirt with anyone. And in the current sexual climate, courtship rituals are dangerous. I can't deal with the risk of being seen to want someone or some particular thing. I certainly can't ask for anything any longer. 

I'm not talking here about rejection. I'm talking about embarrassment and humiliation-- something that has to do with shame, with failing to do the correct thing socially. I won't go back to any place, or speak with any person, that was part of social humiliation for me.